Retrograde
by GraveDigger Resurrection
Summary: No one, Bobby included, ever imagined that The Crisis might come swooping down on him one rainy February evening during a milk run to the corner 7-11. But that’s exactly when it happened. BA


**Title: **Retrograde  
**Genres: **Drama, Romance, Angst  
**Rating: **T for violence and profanity  
**Pairing: **Alex/Bobby, but not for awhile  
**A/N: **So, what to say about this one? The sort of melodrama I love reading myself, and hope you will, too. This fic will basically be an exercise in suspended disbelief for all involved, but I just hope it's a fun ride for everybody. This first chapter was suprisingly fun to write, so I hope it turned out alright. 

**Summary: **No one, Bobby included, ever imagined that _The Crisis _might come swooping down on him one rainy February evening during a milk run to the corner 7-11. But that's exactly when it happened. BA

* * *

It was almost funny, really. Later, after it was all over, Bobby was inclined to laugh at the irony. Because, honestly, if there was going to be a tragedy (Well, yes, it was going to happen to _him_, of course.) then it _ought_ to have ocurred in the midst of one of his warped, unorthodox plays against one of his more-than-slightly-mad suspects. It _should_ have happened while he was balancing hundreds of feet in the air over a construction site, arguing with a perp, or doing a verbal dance around an enraged man with a gun and a will to use it. No one, Bobby included, ever imagined that _The Crisis _might come swooping down on him one rainy February evening during a milk run to the corner 7-11.

But that's exactly when it happened.

--------

It all started because Alex had bullied him into buying some Cheerios. ("You're _allowed_ to eat healthy foods, Goren. From the way you eat, you'd think no one had ever told you that before.") So, obligingly, predictably, he'd snagged a box off the shelf, and bought it, supposedly, as an excuse to chat up the cashier for information on a case. He'd made a point to ignore Alex's resulting and altogether too-smug grin.

But then came the dilemma. He had no milk in his apartment. While this, in and of itself, was not so unusual, the fact that he was home enough to notice it _was. _But then, that's what a six-week suspension will give you, he mused ruefully. Time to pay attention to all the things he normally so blissfully ignored.

And there was no way in hell he was eating those miserable little circles of cardboard _dry_.

In the end, there was nothing to do but bundle up in his thick overcoat, jam his toboggan onto his head and his gloves onto his fingers, and trek boldly out of his apartment in search of fresh dairy.

Less than twenty feet from his apartment, disaster struck.

Alright, so it wasn't really a disaster, but it _did_ get his overcoat all wet. A jogger, a pretty blonde in her early twenties, came round the corner, headphones blasting, open water bottle in hand, and proceeded to run smack into Bobby's broad chest, stumbling backwards a good three feet at the impact.

"S_orry_." There wasn't even an exclamation point on the end of the apology, and the girl actually _glared_ at him as she passed. Water dripping down his front and spreading dark against his coat, Bobby could only wonder how it was _his_ fault that she'd failed to see his six foot, four inch, generally imposing self walking sedately down the middle of the sidewalk. One of life's greater mysteries.

Shaking his head, Bobby gave his coat a final useless swipe, and continued on. He probably ought to get some other things while he was out, he mused. He had a sneaking feeling the bread in his drawer was more mould than grain, and his cupboards were achingly bare of some other basics. Striding across the street, his life momentarily in the hands of an impatient taxi running a red light, he decided against the pack of cigarettes he so desperately wanted. And the beer. He'd managed to make it through his mother's death without them; being stabbed in the back by Frank for the umpteenth time was not going to make him give in.

He didn't recognize the girl at the counter, who gave him a bored stare and snapped her gum as he stepped inside the store. Another sign of how badly he'd been neglecting his basic errands the past few years. Sheila, a quirky, upbeat brunette, used to be the cashier, and had known him by name. Bobby remembered her hitting on him shamelessly as she rang up his items and he tried to help her with her college calculus assignments. He'd never quite gotten around to telling her she oughtn't flirt with a man twice her age.

In all likelihood, she'd graduated and moved on, he realized, giving a nod to the unfamiliar girl, who blinked at him and snapped her gum again, unimpressed. The idea filled him with a strange melancholy, but then, everything seemed to be doing that lately. The shadows always lurking in his busy brain seemed much closer to the surface these days. Brushing it aside, he ambled down the aisles towards the milk, reveling in the mundane debate between one or two percent. Skim was absolutely out of the question; if he wanted water on his cereal, he had an endless supply from the tap at home.

_Crash!_

It came out of nowhere. Bobby didn't even have time to brace himself before a blur shot down the aisle, straight at his legs. It impacted with a dull _whump_, nearly taking him out at the knees, and he staggered back bewilderedly, falling against a shelf, his elbow catching at a rack of potato chips, sending half a dozen tumbling to the ground with a noisy crinkling of aluminum packaging.

"_Adam!_" A horrified shriek echoed down the aisle after the tumbling projectile, and Bobby looked down at the weight on his feet to see a dark-haired little boy staring up at him, mouth agape.

"Hi." The boy didn't say anything back, which Bobby felt was perfectly reasonable, given that he sometimes seemed like a giant when put against full-grown men. "Did you hurt yourself?"

The little boy, Adam, who looked to be about four, blinked at him, and shook his head, slowly.

"_Adam_, for _heaven's sake!"_ A round woman skidded to a halt beside Bobby, looking, understandably, quite frazzled. "I am _so _sorry," She blurted breathlessly, neck craning a little to meet his eyes. Bobby ducked his head obligingly to make the job a little easier. "I have no _idea_ what's gotten into him! With all this crummy weather, I think he's going a little stir crazy, because, well, I know _I_ am, and I guess…" And with that, she trailed off, still looking quite beside herself. Her gaze drifted down to Adam, and became a treacherous glare. Adam's lower lip began to tremble.

"Does this belong to you?" Bobby asked her, mildly, with just the right inflection, and, as always, it did the trick. She looked up at him, startled, and then let out a huff of exasperated laughter.

"Yes, yes, he does." She rolled her eyes, but now Bobby could see a certain good humor returning to the set of her mouth. "And _you_, young man," she said crisply, looking down at her son with a level gaze. "What have you got to say to this nice gentleman?" The boy blinked, and his brow creased just the tiniest bit, and in that briefest instant, Bobby saw a world of rebellion lying just around the corner. "_Adam."_

"Sowwy," Adam said to Bobby's ankles, not sounding very sorry at all. And Bobby couldn't help but grin.

"No problem," he said kindly, and stooped at the waist to catch Adam's eye. "Want a hand up, there?"

Looking suddenly thrilled, Adam raised both arms in the air, bottom still seated comfortably atop Bobby's shoes, and burbled, "Yes! Up pwease!"

Catching the boy under the arms, Bobby lifted him up of his shoes, up past his knees, above his shoulders, and over his head for the briefest of seconds before setting him down on the floor again, this time to the sound of delighted little-boy laughter. "Be a little more careful next time, huh, Bud? You should always try not to give your Mommy too much trouble." But Adam, still bubbling with laughter, was already running off down another aisle.

His mother sent a helpless glance to the heavens, sighed, and looked at the mess of bags at Bobby's feet. "Oh! Here, let me--"

Bobby waved her off, crouching to pick up the bags himself. "You should go after him before he ends up in New Jersey."

The woman laughed again, sighed again, and said a heartfelt "Thank you," before turning and bustling after her child. "_Adam! _Adam Mitchell Burns _you get back here this __**instant!**_" Bobby hid his chuckles in the chip rack as he replaced the bags, keeping a bag of spicy Doritos after a moment's thought.

Soon, he had the intended milk (one percent, because he might as well do the healthy thing _right_ if he was going to eat those disgusting little processed circles Alex fondly referred to as _food_.), bread, and a few other odds and ends he knew he was out of. He was, he actually found, humming to himself. How unusual.

So maybe it was understandable that he was a little slow on the uptake.

There was a man already at the counter when he went to check out. He gave Bobby a queer, flat stare as he walked up, but Bobby had, after all, grown up in New York, and was used to that sort of thing. The guy was standing to the side, and did not look to have purchased anything, so Bobby stepped up beside him and laid his stuff on the counter in front of the girl who was no longer snapping her gum. Who was, in fact, very still and very pale. And, in the reflection of the silver paper-towel dispenser behind her, Bobby could see Adam, clutched in his mother's shaking arms, both of them with wide eyes and white faces.

To his right, resting casually in the man's hand, Bobby, of course, finally saw the gun. Saw the man's finger quivering on the trigger. Saw the barrel pointed in the general direction of his head.

The sound seemed to cut out for a moment, and Bobby felt a sick swoop low in his belly. Because he didn't have his piece or his badge and he'd been an unobservant idiot and now there was a man with a gun and he didn't have one and those odds just really _sucked._ And the girl behind the counter was no more than twenty five, and there was a four year old and his mother at Bobby's back, and the barrel of that gun was still aimed right at his head.

"Get_. Back_." Some distorted part of Bobby's mind catalogued the Hispanic flow of the man's voice, twisted with a tilt of the Bronx in his vowels.

Hands raised at chest level placatingly, he took three slow steps back and to the left, putting himself squarely between the gunman and Adam with his mother. "Just take what you want," He said quietly, in his most soothing voice. "Nobody'll try and stop you."

"Shut the fuck up!" The man snapped, but his voice had a quiver, and his shoulders were too tight as he looked back over at the girl. He swung the gun back to her. "Open up the fucking register, sweetheart, before someone gets hurt. And no fast moves to grab at anything under the counter, you feel me?"

The girl nodded, gave a strange strangled swallow-- she'd downed her gum, Bobby guessed-- and began fumbling numbly with the register. But fear made her movements clumsy and her fingers thick and foreign, and he could see her hands scrabble uselessly for purchase against the metal.

"Come _on_, damn it!" A motion with the gun, a distracted glance back towards the door, and Bobby could see the man's finger tighten carelessly on the trigger. Adam began whimpering, low in his throat.

"Hey, look." He kept his voice low and non-threatening, but the man still twitched violently, his dark eyes tightening in panic as he looked over. "Just take it easy." He took a slow half-step forward. "She's trying to get it open, but she's scared. Just give her a second and you'll get your cash." Another. "No harm no foul, right?"

And in the next instant, though he never knew exactly how, Bobby knew he'd been made. In his four years in Narcotics, he had never, _ever_ been made, even when the cool metal of his shield rested dangerously against his neck under some grunged-up tee shirt right in the middle of a dope-deal. But something-- the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice, the careful-calm of his movements-- broadcasted _'cop'_ clear as day to the man in front of him.

"_Chucha_." The man's voice was full of horror, his eyes wide, and his face suddenly going bloodless. Panicked, he lost his footing, and his arm swung as he stumbled back against the counter. The girl let out a shriek. Bobby was staring down the wrong end of a bad idea once more.

"Iweputa! You're a fucking _cop!_" There was anger blazing in the man's face now, and Bobby felt sick dread try to swallow him up once more.

He nodded. Nodded again, and took a step to the right, away from Adam and his mother. The man's eyes followed him wildly, as did the gun. Like Bobby had been hoping. "_Don't fucking move!" _

"Okay, okay, listen, just _listen_ to me, alright?" Bobby raised his hands, fingers splayed wide, palms pressing out towards the gunman. "You're right, yes, I'm a cop, _yes_. But I- I'm not on, on duty." He tilted his head, neck craned forward, peering earnestly into the other man's eyes. "I don't have a weapon, I don't have a badge. Just, just take the, the money, and go. There'll be no, no trouble. Just go." Even as he said it, Bobby understood, better than he'd ever understood anything in his life, that that was not what was about to happen.

"A fucking cop!" The man hissed again, running his free hand through his hair. There was a tattoo on the inside of his left wrist of a skull and a sword. _Original,_ Bobby though wryly, with the space of his brain that was not taken up trying to think of something productive to do. Something productive that wouldn't get him shot. In the span of two minutes, the situation had spun wildly, almost absurdly out of control in a way that couldn't end well.

"Get on your knees."

Despite it being predictable, Bobby couldn't stop the thrill of shock that raced through him, ice water seeping through his limbs and down his spine in a stunning, freezing shiver of pure fear. "Now wait." His voice cracked hoarsely, cold sweat trickling in a smooth line down the skin of his back. "_Wait._ I--"

"Get on your fucking _knees_, Cop!"

Bobby didn't so much kneel as it was that his knees gave out. He fell with a thump to the dingy white linoleum, staring up at the man's face, sallow and scrunched and soaked with sweat, staring at the girl behind the counter, tears making bizarre streaks down her cheeks. His ears were full of silence, even as he could feel his own heart thumping thick and wild in his chest, could _feel_ his breath leaving his lungs in ragged, desperate gasps. He didn't know who they would call when they found his body, he realized, the thoughts coming to him in helpless gushes, like a sweeping tide of thick, ropy seaweed and filthy brine that clogged his throat.

"-Maldicion! _Shit_. Shit shit shit _shit!_" Someone turned the volume back up in his head, and he became aware of the thick stream of profanities leaving the man's lips as he tore at his hair, shifting his weight to and fro in anxious, desperate rocks. Behind him, the girl was making fluttery whimpering sounds that suggested she was going to be sick. Bobby hoped she wouldn't be. He didn't want that to be the last thing he saw before, before…

"_Shhh_, baby, _shhh_." Adam was sobbing behind him, his mother soothing him in a voice filled with firmness despite its trembling. "It's all right. Shh, it's all right." It wasn't. He tilted his neck back further, looking up at the man, but his vision tunneled down, down to the gaping hole at the end of the barrel staring him straight in the face. Oh God, it_ wasn't_. Bobby swallowed, convulsively, and bile rose to the back of his throat in answer.

"You don't have to do this." Christ, was that even his voice? Rough and high with terror? "You can, you can just _leave._ I-- you can just--"

"Shut up! Shut up! _Shut up!_" Two footsteps slapping against the floor, and then there was cold steel jammed against Bobby's head, digging into his temple. Unable to stop it, a strangled sob left his throat. "Shut the fuck up cop! Shut up and just fucking let me _think!_" The gun pressed harder, and a shiver rocked through Bobby's frame with such force he nearly fell.

In the past two weeks, since his suspension, he'd only looked for Donny once. He had no one else to look after anymore, no one else to take care of. Not his brother, not his mother, _never_ his father. He had a partner (_Oh Christ, Eames, where the fuck are you?)_ who was fed up with his self-destruction, and a job he wasn't sure was still his. And he had a nephew who didn't want found.

Bobby had no idea how to live for himself. It was a thing he'd simply never done. Always there was his mother and his brother. His job. The people he was supposed to protect. A partner whose back he was supposed to have. He lived for other people, doing the things they could not or would not do for themselves. And in the past year, those people and jobs had dwindled. In the past month, they'd disappeared altogether, leaving him floundering out in the wind like a flopping fish on deck, mouth gaped open uselessly, helplessly.

So he'd started doing laundry again. Started cooking a little, cleaning a little, eating a little more often and a little less horribly, and sleeping. A little. He'd started thinking maybe, just _maybe_, even if his family was dead or good as, even if he was no longer Bobby the Cop, Bobby the Good Son, Bobby the One That Stayed, he was still _Bobby_, and maybe it was time to figure out how to be just that.

(And Eames still called him every day, and he thought maybe he could keep being the dumber half of GorenandEames, because she hadn't left yet, even with all he'd done, and wasn't it nice that he still had a title that fit and a title that didn't just belong to _him._)

He hoped they wouldn't call her first. Maybe Ross. Give his Captain something to breathe easy about, for once. (_Eames, where are you? Please don't get here first, don't see this, don't, don't don't--)_

"Alright." Bobby blinked, surprised he'd spoken aloud without meaning too. "All right." But it wasn't him, of course, it was the man, and there was still a cold floor under his bruised knees, and a gun against his bleeding temple.

"I--"

"Close your eyes."

"W-what?" But Bobby knew what. God, he _knew_, and he wasn't as ready for it as he thought he'd be. He wasn't as ready to die as he'd always assumed. What a fucking horrible time to find out.

"Close you fucking _eyes_, Cop! Shut 'em! I don't want to see you! _Shut your eyes!_" The gun pushed harder, but Bobby was more tasting it on the back of his tongue now than feeling it against his skull. His eyes rolled in his head, blurring wildly across the ugly white walls, the freakish gloss of mass-production packaging, the miserable, tear streaked face of the girl behind the counter. _This is not the last thing I want to see. Please, God, this is not the last thing I want to see_, and then the begging in his head started spilling from his lips.

"Please, man, _please_." He was crying, but it didn't matter. "Come on, please, you don't have to do this. Please, come on man, I-I-I--"

"_Shut you eyes!"_ There was a note of hysteria in the man's voice now, and Adam was full-out wailing, and Bobby stared at a carton of cigarettes behind the counter, then let his lids slam shut and close him into blackness. He couldn't help wondering at the fact that a crying little boy and a box of Marlboros would be the last thing he'd ever see or hear, and wasn't it ironic that he used to be afraid that those things, those _exact fucking same things_ would be the last thing he saw or heard when he was a little boy hiding under the bed from his father, Frank trembling in the dark beside him?

"Please, please, please, please," Just that one word was all he could get out now, and even that was nothing more than a whisper, and then nothing, just his lips moving soundlessly, and shouldn't he be saying The Lord's Prayer like a good Catholic? Only he couldn't remember the words, and Eames was going to be the one who found him, he just knew, Eames and her goddamn _Cheerios_.

The gun pulled back, quivering, withdrawing, and Bobby waited, _waited_ for the bullet ripping through his brain and through his being, his mind a blank roar because, oh _God_, he didn't want to die, and, and, and…

And the butt of the gun came down against his temple with crushing, blinding force.

Bobby slumped to the ground without a pause or a noise. For a long moment there was silence, silence, and then a pair of feet began to run, out the store and down the street and as far away as they could get, fading away as Adam took up crying again, and the thin quiet was swallowed by the sound of little-boy sobs, blood pooling in a puddle around Bobby Goren's head.

* * *

_So, what do you think? What happens next? Is he dead? (No.) Horrible? Awesome? So-so? Drop me a line and let me know, would you? I love feedback in all its forms._

_The Spanish stuff the gun-man was saying are just various curse-words, nothing worth translating. The accuracy of those swears is iffy, since they were given to me by my Panamanian friend, who was just a little drunk when he gave them to me. Ah well._

_Also: Anybody wanna beta? I would give you a thousand million cool-points and a batch of cyber cookies if you'd like to help me out with my stupid typos and plot errors._

_Cheers!_


End file.
